OTTAWA (AFP) — Mohammed Momin Khawaja, the first Canadian tried under the nation's anti-terrorism law, was found guilty Wednesday of several charges related to a foiled plot against several British targets.
The Ottawa software developer of Pakistani descent was found to have "knowingly participated" and "knowingly facilitated" a terrorist group's plan to attack a popular London nightclub, a shopping mall and a natural gas network.
However, he may not have known about the plot itself, Justice Douglas Rutherford said in his 52-page decision.
Khawaja, 29, was arrested in March 2004 and was accused of developing bomb detonators, possession of explosives, financing terrorism, and training as a terrorist in Pakistan.
Khawaja's defense lawyer had argued Khawaja meant all of this in support of an insurgency in Afghanistan against coalition forces, not against British targets.
The judge ruled the prosecution did not prove Khawaja's "guilty knowledge of the fertilizer bomb plot" in London.
"There is no direct evidence that Khawaja knew of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer (obtained by his co-conspirators) or the consideration of domestic targets" in Britain, he said.
However, Khawaja's description to one of his co-conspirators about how the bomb detonator he built for them worked "leaves no doubt that Momim Khawaja knew he was building a device to trigger explosions," the judge said.
And so, "I have no reasonable doubt in concluding that in doing the things the evidence clearly establishes that he did, Momin Khawaja was knowingly participating in and supporting a terrorist group," the judge concluded.
Khawaja's defense lawyer Lawrence Greenspon claimed a partial victory in that "he was acquitted of the London bombing."
He did not indicate whether he would appeal the verdict.
Wesley Wark, a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa and a specialist in intelligence and national security issues, however, said: "It does not matter that Momin Khawaja did not know the full details of what his London co-conspirators intended to do."
"He was convicted for the fact that he aligned himself with the London group and he facilitated its preparation to conduct terrorism," he told AFP.
Canada's anti-terrorism law was written to reflect the fact that not all members of terrorist groups are privy to all plot details, he explained.
The prosecution was considered a key test of Canada's anti-terrorism legislation, enacted after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, and tweaked last year after a portion of it was thrown out by a judge because it attempted to define terrorism by what motivated it, and so wrongly attempted to police people's thoughts, religious beliefs or opinions.
Still, the trial was allowed to continue while parliament worked on a fix.
"The anti-terrorism act provisions themselves were on trial in the Khawaja case," said Wark.
"They have been controversial provisions," he said. But "I think the very clear conclusion to be drawn from the Khawaja case is that the antiterrorism act works."
Khawaja was the first to be arrested under the act, and pleaded not guilty.
The devout Muslim was born in Canada of Pakistani immigrant parents and once worked as a computer expert at Canada's Foreign Affairs Department.
The prosecution had argued he sought out the fanatic group of British Muslims, also of Pakistani descent, and designed for them a remote detonator to set off a fertilizer bomb.
The detonator was found in Khawaja's Ottawa house along with an arsenal of guns during a police raid in 2004, the court heard.
The prosecution also laid out emails, and descriptions of video and wiretap surveillance that purportedly tied him to the bomb plot.
In one email sent from a Foreign Affairs ministry computer, according to prosecutors, Khawaja discussed using a courier to send the detonator to his contacts in London.
In 2003, Khawaja also traveled to northern Pakistan for weapons training, and made his secondary residence in Pakistan available to his new "bros" (brothers).
Sentencing is set for November 18.
Khawaja faces possible life in prison.
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